Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Online retail sales and payments
made by mobile phone increased from a year earlier as shoppers
flocked to the Web for deals and made purchases via wireless
handsets on the first Monday after Thanksgiving.

Sales over the Internet increased 15 percent as of 6 p.m.
New York time on so-called Cyber Monday, compared with a year
earlier, according to International Business Machines Corp.
Mobile payment volume increased more than sixfold, or by 514
percent, as of 2 p.m., said PayPal, a division of EBay Inc.

Amazon.com Inc., EBay and other Internet retailers pay
close attention to buying on the Monday after Thanksgiving, when
many people step up Web purchasing of holiday gifts. Online
spending today may rise to $1.2 billion from $1.03 billion last
year, according to ComScore Inc, a market-research firm. Shares
of Amazon and EBay climbed.

“Consumers are definitely opening their wallets again,”
said Andrew Lipsman, a vice president of industry analysis at
ComScore. “Consumers have been saving and got their houses in
order. They are feeling a bit better about spending than the
past several years.”

Internet sellers offered early discounts and set up pop-up
locations leading up to Cyber Monday, aiming to grab a bigger
portion of holiday sales by luring consumers from bricks-and-mortar retailers. Sales on the Web and in malls surged over the
weekend, with consumers spending a record $52.4 billion, the
National Retail Federation said.

Shares of Seattle-based Amazon, the No. 1 e-commerce
company, jumped 6.4 percent to $194.15 at the close in New York,
the biggest gain in more than three months. EBay, based in San
Jose, California, rose 5.1 percent to $29.66, its largest
increase since mid-September.

Online Shopping at Work

E-commerce sales in November and December will rise 15
percent to $37.6 billion, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore
estimated. The researcher said Black Friday, or the day after
Thanksgiving, brought $816 million in online sales.

Shopping from wireless devices is also on the rise this
year, Armonk, New York-based IBM said in a statement, with about
12 percent of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retail
site today, and 6.7 percent using one to make a purchase.

Many consumers wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving to
make online purchases, some of them taking advantage of faster,
more robust Internet connections available from offices. Half of
U.S. workers plan to spend time shopping via the Web this
holiday season, on par with 52 percent last year, according to a
survey by Careerbuilder.com.

Of that tally, 34 percent will spend an hour or more
shopping this season, according to the survey of 4,384 workers
and 2,696 employers. It was conducted from Aug. 16 to Sept. 8.